Your favourite line of Mario RPGs are officially back. Shortly after the release of the Super Mario RPG remake and the franchise’s fastest-selling game to date, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Nintendo is set to release a new(ish) Mario game in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and soon, if we believe the rumors.
Initially revealed at the September 2023 Nintendo Direct, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was originally released on the Nintendo GameCube. Unlike other games from Nintendo’s bygone era of trying to compete with Microsoft and Sony in the console space, the graphics of the second Paper Mario game ever have hold up remarkably well. The paper and cardboard art design hasn’t aged as much as you’d expect from a two-decade-old game. Still, the Nintendo Switch port, which should arrive soon, clearly enjoyed several graphical enhancements to make it more aesthetically pleasing in the eyes of modern gamers.
Utilizing the Switch’s more powerful hardware and advanced techniques, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door hasn’t looked better, as per the trailer – the characters look like cardboard cutouts that have magically come alive. Similarly, it looks to be just as faithful to the original game as the remake of the progenitor of Mario’s RPG ventures.
While we’d love to say that our source comes from Nintendo, it doesn’t, but it’s official, nonetheless. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board, or ESRB, for short, recently uploaded its rating for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. As expected, it’s rated “E” for Everyone (sorry, couldn’t help it).
The rating doesn’t confirm when Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door will come on the Switch but guarantees an announcement is coming soon.
Nintendo has been on a massive roll lately despite the concerns about the aging hardware housed inside the Switch. Most would kill to have a game like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom come out exclusively on their platform in one year. But, that isn’t all that the oldest video game company in the world give us. Just like the Yuletide season, Nintendo was like a gift that kept on giving this year, releasing equally memorable titles like Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Super Mario RPG, and to complete the melding of the old and the new with a massively successful experience, we saw the release of the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time this year with The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
With a smorgasbord of upcoming Mario-related content coming next year, it’s safe to say that, just like the Switch, the old jumpsuit-wearing plumber still has plenty of mileage left.
Unfortunately, whereas Nintendo’s first-party exclusives enjoyed the benefit of welcoming arms this year, we couldn’t say the same for its biggest ports. In particular, Mortal Kombat 1 and Batman: Arkham Trilogy, are still close to unplayable on the third-best-selling console platform.
